


But Always Come Back to Me

by Nolfalvrel



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Adorable Connor, Alternate Universe - Human, Box Boy AU, Box Boy Connor, Caretaker Markus, Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Whump, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Good Dog Sumo (Detroit: Become Human), Hank Anderson & Connor Friendship, Hank is on his way to accidentally adopting a son, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Panic Attacks, Protective Markus (Detroit: Become Human), Rated For Violence, Recovery, The best way to share love is with sandwiches, There's even two pieces that get held together, Whump, and dark themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:21:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29105496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nolfalvrel/pseuds/Nolfalvrel
Summary: He’s planned for this. Worked it over in his head, standing at the door, hand trembling on the handle, change gathered from the dish with all the keys.The note in wobbly letters.‘Store. Coming back.’--------------------------------------In which Connor meets the goodest boi in the universe and his grumpy owner, and Markus finally knows that Connor's healing.
Relationships: Connor/Markus (Detroit: Become Human), Hank Anderson & Connor, Hank Anderson & Sumo, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Original Chloe | RT600/Josh
Comments: 13
Kudos: 32





	But Always Come Back to Me

**Author's Note:**

> Stringing words together has been really hard lately, but the Box Boy Alternate Universe started by [Mimoru](https://mimorugk.tumblr.com/post/630497255788560384/markus-and-connor-boxboy-au-ive-been-digging-a) has been extremely tempting, so I thought I'd try getting some sweet recovery fiction out of it.
> 
> **Additional Important Notes**
> 
> -This fic adheres to 'Connor being found at a gas station', with Connor having lived with Markus for 8-10 months  
> -This universe assumes that there are still shelters available for homeless populations and victims of domestic violence, which will become more relevant in Chapter 2  
> -There is no smut or explicit non-con content as this is recovery focussed, but there will be allusions to previous abuse from Connor's owner again in Chapter 2  
> -This fic is also intended to focus more on the friendships Markus and Connor are developing around themselves (their support networks), but RK1K is definitely implied endgame

Markus had said he could leave, so he does.

They’d taken a journey together, quite close to the beginning, where Markus had pointed everything out, had asked if Connor wanted a card to say it. Backtracking very quickly to explain in splutters that it was all optional, was just supposed to be a guide if he ever got lost and didn’t know how to get back.

He’d pushed his hands out, like telling Connor to slow down or wait. The space of an ant between Connor’s shoulders and his dark, splayed digits, the colour of coffee cooled with milk, tinged a little red in answer to the cold.

Said it in the same voice as when he’d put the extra locks on the door, showed Connor all the keys. Dropped them in the dish.

“This is just a precaution.” 

Markus’ eyes had been wide and earnest. Two separate captures of the Earth in rotation, brought into a single plane. _Viridi terrae_ and _caeruleum mare_.

“This is just a precaution, to make sure you’re safe. This isn’t an order to stay here. You can go wherever you’d like.” He’d made an amendment then. Eyes searching somewhere as though he could pluck the right words from the crowd drifting around them. Connor had chased his gaze, wondering if maybe he could find them too.

All those soft good words, that Markus always seems to pick.

“And-and this isn’t an order, too, but, if you do go,” Markus paused, and the red-cold on his cheeks had been more pronounced. “I would appreciate if you let me know the reason why.” His eyes had dropped. As though pulled by a weight.

“And if you planned on coming back.”

Connor worries cardstock in his pocket. Feels a corner, flicks it back and forth, like the ear of a cat. It’s small enough to fit into his palm. It’s supposed to be in the flat brown flapping thing Markus calls Connor’s ‘wallet’, but Connor wants the gloss of it between his fingers. Holding it is the only way he can be sure not to lose it. Thick stock, smoother than the one they use to go over his letters. Not quite as silky as his three picture books.

It has Markus’ handwriting on it in big letters. If Connor concentrates, he can feel the grooves from the pen.

Where he chooses to leave to is not far. Markus’ neighbourhood is a little kitsch, steep-hill-street, reclaimed crumbling architecture positioned like it’s antique and rustic and charismatic instead of just cheap. Flat brown brick hung with plants and mewling critters and several bikes stacked haphazardly on balconies, like tumbled pieces of _Jenga_. As though they’ve given in to the gravity of the slope the buildings are set on.

People walk everywhere here because everything is close, and they all have knit bags with names that don’t match the stores they go into. 

Reusable bags, Markus had explained, struggling to shove closed the rickety drawer of his own. Grin a grimace.

There are lots of stores stacked on top of each other, and more walls than windows— but for the ones he can spy, Connor can look through clearly to see the contents inside. That had taken some adjusting to. No longer being surrounded by huge swathes of filmed glass, like a million slotted mirrors. Trying to avoid his own face in each of them, and settling on the floor.

Like now, where he catches a flash of his own stare while trying to see what kind of fish have been placed in the display of ‘ _Petzzeria_ ’. Sees paleness, dark hair, a hood. Shuffles faster in panic. Feels over the swoop of an ‘O’.

They’d been small and green, like emerald fairy lights. The chromis in the tank.

He’s hungry. Not clawing hunger, like in the beginning, or The Very Beginning, before that. As though a tunnel had been carved in his belly, hunger settling and refusing to slumber in its den. 

No, not like that.

He’s just—

He’s hungry because he can’t help but regard Markus’ old stove as though it’s capable of delivering on its violent, wretched noises, and he still can’t quite make out the directions on the cans that need the microwave. Usually, he’d make a sandwich, but there hadn’t been any bread, or things to dress it.

Even that, normally, would set Connor to simply waiting for Markus to come back and approve of some solution. But Markus always fusses so thoroughly when he finds he hasn’t eaten, bemoaning about being neglectful of Connor’s needs. Scolding himself with lots of quiet words and burns from the pan and nicks from knives in a rush to make him something, _’anything, Connor, I’ll make you anything’_ — _’really,_ nothing _all day?_

It’s unfair, what Connor does, to someone so nice. Markus seems impervious to caretaker's fatigue—impervious to ire-at-Connor. In fact, is far more prone to diving Olympic pool deep into disgust-at-self. 

Connor’s thumb swipes low. The ‘J’ has a deep strike on the serif, excited, fast, like when Markus showed him sheet music, before shaking his hand _nevermind_ and saying Connor would understand if he heard him play. And Connor sat next to him like a little lost duck, and watched his fingers sing out beauty.

How does somebody so kind think so little of themselves?

Maybe because of people like Connor. Black, slow vacuums, taking little pieces, leaving little holes. 

A _ding-ding!_ brings Connor’s head up. There’s a bike coming fast on his left and two people on the right. A pair of long-haired girls talking animatedly, leaving a narrow gap between them and the cyclist. 

Connor squeezes himself small as both parties pass. Close, but not touching. Markus says making himself small is the reason people won’t move. But he still hasn’t learned to say _‘Excuse me’_ in a way that doesn’t get a stare coming round, trying to pick out his face.

As though validating his right to ask for space.

He’s about halfway there now. He’s crossed the hairdressers with the candy cane canopy and the store covered in black swirls that smells like a smog cloud, which Markus also dislikes because they throw ‘smashing-bottles’ parties out back like they’re calling 'E.T.', 'Space Invaders' and 'Alien' in one single sound signal. 

The grocery mart sits at the end of the lane and tucks right around the corner in a soft ‘V’. It sells the same three kinds of flowers outside so as to not compete with the florists across the street. Carnations, chrysanthemums and alstroemeria. It’s a small place, lit with yellow lights and filled with green shelves, but well-tended. And usually at this time there aren’t as many people inside as there are making barricades out on the street. 

Usually, although it also only has people-cashiers, instead of machines.

Connor presses the corner of the card a little harshly this time, and releases quickly when his thumb begins to press an actual fold into its shape.

‘Usuality’ plays in Connor’s favour, and there’s about four other people with him when he finally shuffles inside. Including the clerk makes five. The bakery is nestled in the back-left corner. Connor knows this, but he also knows that people here normally do not beeline for their items like a rat for cheese unless they want to draw attention to themselves. 

Normally, people here wander and peruse and stoop and pull bottles and jars off shelves and put them back as though testing they had been real. He knows it’s normal because Markus has done it too, shoving a hand into piles of vegetables and squeezing and turning and squinting. 

It seems customary to lift and turn about three to seven things one has no intention of purchasing in a singular shopping experience. Markus had tried to explain to him what all that lifting and turning was for, but he’d been too focussed on keeping hold of Markus’ arm and away from everyone else to take it in. So mostly, Connor is convinced grocery stores have a sort of dualism to them.

Food, and assessing-plus-reaffirming one’s kinesthetic tactile potential. 

Maybe even a trinitarianism, in testing one’s ability to resist immunocommunicable diseases.

Then patrons place whatever passes bar on the till, and don’t always talk but always smile as the cashier rings up their total. When there isn’t a card, they pass over money. 

Hand to hand.

Connor feels the bills in his other pocket, doesn’t mind crumpling them small as he wanders into the nearest aisle. Fumbling for a basket. 

He’s planned for this. Worked it over in his head, standing at the door, hand trembling on the handle, change gathered from the dish with all the keys.

The note in wobbly letters.

‘Store. Coming back.’ 

He needs to grab three things. That’s all he has to do. Wander the lanes, remember the points Markus had plotted on their previous trips. Look for the same colours and shapes on the labels. Take them to the checkout, and put them on the belt.

Then—

Then—

Then he—

_Then he just has to touch for a second_ and he gets to leave.

Connor sucks in air, feels his heart start new rhythm when it comes in so very thinly, like pressed through a straw. It’s a much faster pace. A shift from on '2' to on '1'. 

The first item is peanut butter, snatched up absently, eyes skating over the brand as he holds it, more focussed on assessing whether he has already been encroached on by other shoppers. It’s quickly basketed when he hears the automatic doors slide open again and the deep voice of a man greeting the cashier.

While he darts around stacks of rice on an endcap, an arm comes out suddenly, blocking him, and Connor freezes. 

“Oh, I’m sorry dear!” 

The arm is drawing back. The tone is high and apologetic. Not a blockade. An accident. Reaching for something on the shelf. Connor makes out long auburn hair turning grey and a wrinkling neck, not quite yet aged, and if he looks up he could see a face, but he doesn’t—

“Go ahead sweet-"

—wait, just moves, gets away.

The next aisle glows under gold as he lurches into it hastily. Flexing on the spine of the card, thumb worrying at the words. He comes to shaky rest where several stories of jam make their home. Blackberry and blueberry and strawberry and mixes of all three, some jars swapping the demonym ‘jelly’ for ‘marmalade’ and bursting up the scene with yellow and orange.

It’s a Seurat only each of the dots are blown too wide, and there’s got to be a hundred different shades of supreme saturation. He can’t focus under the visual noise, feels like everything keeps shifting every time he tries to focus from absent space. 

He doesn’t know if his hand would have been able to keep clawed hold of the jar.

He doesn’t know if he would have been able to keep grip as he finally zooms in on one with a sunny tag and smaller number, and begins to lift it from the shelf.

He’s grasping the jar one moment, then a dog’s boofing, and a voice is snapping out, “Oi, down you mutt!”

His hand is empty the next second, and the very next cycles past with a shattering of glass.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah not much happens here but I'm trying to stay motivated to finish off the second half by posting the first XD 
> 
> Please let me know if you enjoyed with a comment, and remember that kudos are free! :3


End file.
